Same Song, Different Verses
by Dyskolos
Summary: A collection of stories exploring different ways the lives of the Winchesters' (and friends) could have played out. Fourth: A de-powered Castiel finds himself in 1983, and sets out to foil Fate herself and save his friends from a lifetime of suffering. He loses the battle, but with some help, he may just win the war.
1. The More I Learn About People

_Disclaimer: Supernatural does not belong to me. _

_A/N: This story will be a collection of "canon-divergent AU" stories, with a brief description of the premise of each particular one-shot at the beginning of the chapter. There will be a mixture of stories with varying focuses on Dean, Sam, Cas, John, etc., and perhaps more than one story in each "verse." _

_Sam and Dean are itinerant hunters, crisscrossing the country and working only with Bobby, hoping that no one will discover their furry little secret. _

The More I Learn About People

"I'm telling you, Sammy," Dean says through a mouthful of burger. "There's something there."

Sam scowls at Dean's disgusting eating, more out of habit than anything, as he takes the newspaper and scans the article. A hiker, Eddy Northcut, was snatched from a trail in the woods around White Rock, Maine. His girlfriend said a mountain lion did it.

"Seems like it could be an honest-to-god animal kill, Dean."

"Yeah, except for the part where five other hikers have gone missing from that town in the past three months, a town that usually has a total of exactly _zero_ missing persons per year. And the part where they found his head a mile away from where he was attacked"—Dean leans in for the dramatic reveal—"squashed flat."

"Okay," Sam concedes, wolfing down his last few bites of salad. "This may be our kind of thing."

"Yeah, you think, Mr. Peabody?"

* * *

White Rock is a mid-size town on the edge of a plus-size forest. It gets almost all its revenue from tourism, which means that priority number one is stopping the disappearances, so when Sam and Dean roll up with State Ranger badges, they're all but given the keys to the city. Their first stop is the morgue, where they check out what's left of the body—very little, and the newspaper wasn't exaggerating about the whole flattened skull thing. Sam's seen a lot of surreal and disgusting stuff in his twenty-three years, but this is pretty high on the list. One glance and he has crossed wendigo, rugaru, black dog, and werewolf off his mental list. None of them have the inclination or the strength to do _that_ to a human being.

"So what do we think?" Deans asks after they've peeled off their gloves and stepped out into the street. "Bigfoot got a hankering for some human pancakes?"

Sam snorts. "That's better than any theories I've got."

They walk about twenty feet and reach the edge of the woods, which Sam feels is an apt description of this town as a whole.

"So…I guess one of us interviews the girlfriend, and the other, you know, checks out the crime scene?" Dean taps his nose as he says "checks out" and looks at Sam expectantly, and Sam knows which of the two he's doing. He frowns. "C'mon, don't give me that look."

Dean stands guard as Sam ducks behind a copse of trees and slips out of his clothes, folding them up neatly. He's looked high and low, but he's never found a way to make the change without getting naked first that doesn't end with his dog form tangled up in jeans and flannel. The whole process, to Sam, is undignified and borderline humiliating. Dean, of course, thinks it's hilarious. The trees seem to grow and the colors to dim as he turns, dropping down to all fours and giving his tail an experimental wag.

"You good?" Dean calls out.

Sam barks, and Dean walks over and picks up his bundle of clothes. "So, meet you here or back at the room?"

Sam would rather not have animal control called on him as walks back to the motel. His dog form is a Malamute, and Malamutes aren't exactly delicate little dogs; the locals might think he's the thing that's been snacking on hikers. He _woof_s.

"Alright, here it is. I'm going to go talk to the girl. Good luck, Balto."

_Balto saved hundreds of children's lives_, Sam considers telling Dean the next time he finds himself with sufficiently advanced vocal cords. But he's not sure if Dean meant it as an insult or some sort of mini pep talk, so he lets it go.

Sam trots through the woods, snuffling through the undergrowth. He tries to filter out the normal woodsy scents—trees, squirrels, a tantalizing whiff of deer, the putrid muck of stagnant water—and focus on the their-kind-of-thing. He's glad that the locals are too freaked out to set foot in the woods, because the gray and bright white of his fluffy coat provides everything but camouflage.

The stench of human blood crashes over Sam, and he follows it to an otherwise non-descript stretch of woods. Some deputy had bravely tried to mark off the scene with bright yellow crime scene tape stretched out between a few trees (or at least, Sam knows it must be bright yellow—with the limited cones of his dog's eyes, it appears a washed out beigey brown).

The blood smell is still relatively fresh, a few days old at the most, so this must be the place where the latest guy was killed. Sam pads right into the thick of the odor and goes to work.

Sam has trained himself to identify everything from the ozone tang of spirits to the rotting stink of vampires, but no familiar supernatural scent jumps out at him. Interesting. Sam lifts his nose to the wind, sniffing. There's something distinctly feline hanging in the air—could it really have been a mountain lion?

Sam breathes deeper. He's scented cougar before, but no, this isn't cougar. There's something foreign under the smell, something darker.

Sam is so caught up trying to untangle the mystery aroma that he hears the intruder before he smells it. A branch _snaps! _some ten or fifteen yards to his left and Sam freezes. He sniffs again and catches human on the air.

He dashes away as silently as possible and crouches in a nearby hollow, hoping that the human didn't see him, or assumed that he was just a native forest-dweller. He slowly counts to ten and then peers over the edge of the hollow.

Humans all look like grayish blobs when he's a dog, so he takes in the few, generic details that he can make out—the strong build, the hair shaved close to the man's skull—and then does his best to memorize the man's scent for later positive identification. The guy kind of smells like…Dean. Like leather and sweat and gunpowder.

The guy's squatting in the loose circle of crime scene tape, poking through the fallen leaves. So, he's a hunter. It's not too surprising—a flattened human skull isn't the kind of subtle tip-off only the most seasoned of hunters pick up on. But Dean (and Dad before him) insists on them never working with another hunter unless Bobby has personally vouched for them, and it's a good rule. You never know who might have a problem with the whole skin-walker thing. They've had…unpleasant experiences before, and Dean doesn't like to take chances.

Sam decides to pack it in for the day. He hasn't learned much—just that it's not something they've hunted before and it might be feline in nature, but that's not nothing and he can't exactly continue his sleuthing with Unidentified Hunter roaming around. Maybe Dean has gotten something useful out of the girl.

He pads back to the rendezvous point and waits for Dean. Now he sees the wisdom of Dean's suggestion of meeting back at the room—now his only option is to wait for Dean as a Malamute or as a butt naked human. He settles down in a patch of warm sunlight and watches the yellowy leaves on the gray trees blow in the breeze.

He's drifted off into a nice nap by the time the Impala rumbles up, and Dean unceremoniously dumps his clothes and shoes on top of him. Sam leaps to his feet and snarls.

"Take it easy, Cujo." Dean turns away as Sam changes back and scrambles into his clothes. "Well, the girl says it was a mountain lion."

"Seriously?" The witnesses rarely have sane-sounding stories in his experience.

Dean raises his hand. "Let me finish. The girl says it was a mountain lion with a giant wrecking ball on its tail."

Sam blinks. Okay, now they're back on track to weird.

"Yeah. Even for us, right? Did you sniff anything out?"

"Nothing familiar. Something sort of like a mountain lion. And—" Sam hesitates. If he tells Dean about the hunter, his brother might demand that they take off right away, and Sam kind of wants to see this one through. They don't encounter brand new monsters very often.

"What?"

Sam sighs. No way Dean's going to let this go now. "There was a guy in the woods, checking out the crime scene. A hunter, I think."

Dean's face hardens immediately. "He see you?"

"No. I mean, I don't think so. And even if he did, all he saw was a dog, Dean. We can finish this hunt."

Dean still looks uneasy, so Sam turns the (_ha_) puppy-dog eyes on him. "Fine," he capitulates. "But we hear one word in town about someone who saw a husky loose in the words, we bail. Deal?"

"Deal. And for the last time, Dean, I'm a _Malamute_. Not a husky."

"Whatever." A half-smile tugs on the corner of Dean's mouth as he climbs into the Impala and Sam knows it will definitely not be the last time. Dean revs the engine to life. "Where to?"

"The library. I need to do some research."

"Whatever you say, Genevieve."

That one actually requires Sam to put in some thought. Soon, though, he remembers the lovable chocolate-brown cartoon dog. "Dude, you just admitted you watched _Madeline_."

"No, Sammy, _you_ watched _Madeline_. I watched you."

* * *

While Sam hits the books, Dean falls asleep in a chair at the library, snoring loud enough to earn him dirty looks from the librarian. Sam wakes him up with a book thrown at his chest.

"It's a ball-tailed cat," he says, and Dean blinks him.

"You made that up."

"Nope." Sam sits next to Dean and plucks the book from his brother's chest, opening it to the page he'd bookmarked. A black-and-white drawing of a cougar-like creature with a thick, bulbous, barbed lump at the end of tail glares out at them. "See? They're indigenous to North American forests. They use the ball to smash their prey flat before they eat it."

"Shit," Dean says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Ball-tailed cat."

"Yeah."

"Well alright then. We got any idea how to kill this thing?"

"Flint to the heart."

Dean makes a face. "Flint?"

"Yeah. Looks like we're going bow-hunting."

"With home-made arrows." Dean stands up, stretching. "What, the friggin'… ball-tailed cat's too good for iron or silver?" Dean looks understandably pissed off at the prospect of spending the afternoon knapping their own blades and arrowheads, because flint's not exactly the kind of versatile weapon they keep in the trunk, but Sam's kind of glad the weapon doesn't have to be silver. He knows Dean doesn't mind, but Sam hates having to wrap up the silver weapons so he can touch them. "So, where does this thing lair up?"

"Uh, caves, maybe? Or really big trees?"

"Awesome. How specific."

"What do you want me to say? The lore's pretty scanty. But I got its scent, so we'll be able to track it down."

They drive around the perimeter of the town until they find a particularly rocky looking patch of woods. Dean mumbles about dumbass ball cats the whole time they're picking around for suitable chunks of stone.

"Looking for some flint?"

Sam flinches at the sudden voice. Dean straightens. There's a man standing at the edge of the road, and Sam knows without a single sniff that it's the hunter from the woods. He throws a pointed glance sideways and then Dean knows it too.

"Yeah," Dean says, and to the casual observer he's oozing relaxed confidence, but Sam can see the tension in his muscles, in the lines around his mouth. "How'd you know?"

"Name's Gordon Walker, and it looks to me like we're hunting the same thing." Gordon smiles. "Thought someone was trying to pull one over on me when I ended up on 'ball-tailed cat.'"

"Yeah, no kidding." Dean's shoulders relax a little. "I'm Dean, and this is my brother Sam."

Sam tries for a smile, but the hair on the back of his neck is standing on end and a growl is building in his chest. He just wants to get out of here.

Gordon steps up onto the rocks with them. "You know, I've got some extra flint knives, if you two get tired of banging stones together."

Dean glances at Sam before he opens his mouth, and Sam knows his brother has picked up on his uneasiness, knows Dean's going to say no.

And then the shit hits the fan.

Gordon locks eyes with Sam and pulls something small and brown out of his coat and squeezes it and then Dean lunges forward and Sam feels himself shrink, sees the colors fade from his vision, and no, this can't be happening, he hadn't tried to turn—

Sam hits the ground as a dog and everything goes black.

* * *

When Dean comes to, his first thought is how the _fuck_ did he let that douchey fucker get the drop on him? His head pounds like a motherfucker and there's something warm running down the side of his face and he figures he must have hit his head on some goddamn flint when Gordon slugged him and he fell. He tries to stand, but something tugs at his wrist and holy shit, is he fucking handcuffed to a fucking _car_?

He blinks the shifting darkness out of his eyes and takes stock of the situation. He's handcuffed to the bumper of a car—and not even a nice car, a bright red piece of shit car—and sitting on the service road he and Sam drove in on and where the fuck is Sam?

Sam is lying on the road, too, far out of his reach, a big white and gray dog drawing in shallow breaths.

"You know, I'm almost disappointed."

Dean's gaze snaps up to see Gordon, the dead man walking, carrying a duffel bag. He drops it next to Sam, and Sam glares up at him. Dean wonders if Sam is conscious why the fuck isn't he tearing Gordon to pieces, and then he sees muzzle, the choke collar around Sam's throat, the length of rope tethering him to the same car as Dean, and fury courses through him.

"I expected this to be a lot harder."

Dean so isn't up for the fucking bad-guy monologue. "How'd you get Sam to turn?"

Gordon pulls out a little brown burlap bag and waves it at him. Hex bag. "Spell. Forces the skin-walker it's directed at to turn into their animal shape."

Awesome. Dean doesn't know what he hates more, the fact that this psycho forced Sam to turn, or that he apparently then stripped his brother's clothes off, or that he nabbed both of them and dragged them out onto the fucking road and tied them up. Come to think of it, Dean has a fucking lot of things to hate Gordon for.

"I've heard a lot of stuff about the Winchester boys over the years, you know, strange stuff." He pulls a length of chain—_silver_ chain—from his bag, and Dean wants to punch him in his fucking face over and over again like he's never wanted anything else. "I never put much stock in it, thought it was just the usual hunter rumor mill. But I had a light week and thought, why not look into it?" He wraps the chains around Sammy's body, and Sam whines and his flesh smokes. Dean's vision goes red. "And I'm on not your tail for twelve hours when I see this one—" he kicks Sam's side and Dean _snarls_—"show his true colors."

"Dammit, Gordon!" Dean pulls at the handcuff until the metal slices deep into his flesh, blood dripping down to the asphalt, and he can't even feel it, not with more adrenaline than oxygen pumping through his veins, not while Sam is bound in silver chains and whimpering. "He's never hurt anyone who didn't have it coming. He's a hunter!"

Gordon looks at him with uncaring eyes. "He's a monster, Dean. And I'm sorry, but that's never gonna change."

"Gordon, listen to me!"

But Gordon's not listening to him. Gordon's picking up a silver knife and he's kneeling down next to Sammy's shaking form. "You should be thanking me, Dean. You too, Sammy." Dean's incredibly proud that Sam has enough left in him to growl at that. "I'm stopping you before you can do any damage." Gordon turns back to where Dean's trying to tear his own hand off. "You'll see this is for the best, Dean," he says. And then he raises the knife.

"SAM!"

Dean's shout twists into a howl as he turns. His skin ripples into short brown and white fur, and his teeth grow into fangs. His paw slips easily from the handcuff and he leaps out of his shoes and throws himself at Gordon's jugular.

He's just in time and he's too fucking slow. The knife slices through the flesh of Sammy's flank before Dean's flying body crashes into Gordon and knocks it away. He has just enough time to relish in the shocked and horrified look in Gordon's eyes before he sinks his teeth into Gordon's throat and _tears_.

As soon as the bastard's dead, Dean changes back as quickly as he can. Waves of pain crash through him at the too fast transition, and no doubt he's going to have a migraine later from the rapid shifts in his senses, but can't bring himself to give a single fuck about that when Sam's in trouble. Dean's clothes are twisted hopelessly around him and he manages to get his arms through his sleeves and his pants on straight before he collapses at Sam's side. He spits out a gob of blood and muscle.

"It's okay, Sammy." The stab wound is his first priority. Dean grabs his jacket and presses it against the messy, gaping cut in Sam's side, trying to staunch the blood flow. "Not that bad," he murmurs as Sam lets out a long, high whine. "Not that bad, little brother."

Next Dean finds a knife in Gordon's bag and cuts off the collar and muzzle, and then unwraps the chains as gently as he can, keeping up a running litany of "Hey, hey, hey, I've got you, buddy, everything's fine," hating Gordon and himself and the world every time he uncovers a bleeding welt and Sam whimpers. The fucker used spiked chains. Dean wishes he could tear his throat out all over again.

Once he's finished with battlefield triage, Dean is painfully aware that this isn't a motel room fix. Sam needs a hospital.

"Sammy." He rubs his free hand over Sam's ears like he knows the freaking girl likes as his other hand presses over the worst wound. "Think you can change back, buddy?" It would be better if he could take Sam to a human hospital.

Sam's eyes screw shut and his body shudders, and Dean can tell he's trying as hard as he can, but it stays a dog's body. That can happen, Dean knows from (god awful) experience—if you're hurt bad enough, you can't change. Sammy's going to be stuck this way until he gets better.

Unless he doesn't get better—then Dean will be salt-and-burning a dog.

No. Fuck no. Dean banishes that thought from his mind. Sammy's gonna be fine. "It's okay, Sammy. No problem. Hey, you'll be easier to carry this way."

He lifts Sam as gently as possible, but he can't help jarring him and Sam whines. He settles Sam in the back of the Impala, for once not caring about the dog fur and the blood, and then guns it to the animal hospital he noticed on the way into town. He's been behind the wheel for nearly five minutes before he catches a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror and realizes his face is slathered with blood. He wipes it off and presses the accelerator.

* * *

Dean is too panicked and shaky from adrenaline to come up with a better cover story than "my dog was kidnapped as an animal sacrifice by Satanists," but with his honestly terrified face and all the crap that's happened in this town lately, the vets swallow it and no one calls the cops as he paces the waiting room. It's hours before he gets any definitive news, and when he calls Bobby to finish up the hunt and take care of Gordon's body, it kills him that he can't give an answer to the old man's question of how Sam is doing.

Eventually, a veterinary surgeon emerges from the operating room and Dean descends on him. They are, Dean learns with a relief that makes him weak at the knees, fairly certain Sam will survive.

"But even if he does pull through," the man says carefully. "Your dog will have a long, painful recovery ahead of him. He likely won't be up to running speed for months. It might be kinder to—"

Rage surges through Dean as he realizes what the guy is suggesting. "To what? To _kill_ him?"

The man blanches. "Sir, I'm just saying, it's a very low quality of life for—"

"Then why don't you go back in that room and make it better instead of asking me to kill my br—" Dean stops himself in mid-sentence. "My best friend."

The man nods hurriedly and skitters back into the O.R., leaving Dean to sink into the nearest chair and bury his face in his hands. Why the fuck couldn't he have let Sammy interview the girl for once? Then it would be him Gordon saw change, not Sam, and him in that O.R.

* * *

It's another few hours before a female vet—clearly he's scared off the man—comes out and tells him that Sammy's all patched up and looking good. She leads him into a recovery room where Sam—swaddled up in so many bandages he looks like one of those Egyptian dog-mummies—is resting. Not wanting to disturb his brother's injuries, Dean scrubs his knuckles over Sam's muzzle. "Hey, Sam."

Sammy's tongue laps out, the rough surface running over Dean's fingers. "Gross, dude," he murmurs, but he doesn't really mind. Rules for acceptable dog affection are different than rules for acceptable people affection, although that doesn't mean he won't be giving Sam shit for this when the kid is up to it.

Sam's eyes slip shut, and soon he's snoring gently. The vet approaches, checking Sam's bandages, taking his pulse.

"So, how much longer 'til I can spring Sammy from this place?"

"Well," she says cheerfully. "He's healing up nicely. Much better than any of us expected." Dean's jaw tightens as he remembers exactly how much the vets didn't think Sam was gonna heal up nicely. "I think you can take him home tomorrow, if you're ready to bring him back every few days for check-ups."

Dean nods. He has no intention of doing it, of course, but if Sam's good enough to go home then he'll be good enough to change back and Dean can handle the check-ups himself, as long as Sam's human. Although he is a little worried about how the stitches will transfer to Sam's human form.

"I can tell you love him a lot." The vet—Cindy, her name tag says—is still standing there, one hand petting Sam's head. "How long have you had him?"

"Uh…pretty much my whole life?"

Cindy smiles. "It can feel like that with your dog, can't it?"

Dean returns her smile. _Sister, you have no idea. _

* * *

Dean drives for as long as he thinks Sam can handle and then gets them set up in a nicer-than-usual, mystery-stain-free motel room, and soon Sam is able to change back into his gigantic human form. The stitches grow with him, thank fuck, although that does leave Dean to wonder why stitches are apparently cool when clothes are such a fucking headache. Not that he'd ever admit it to Sam, but even he finds having to go stark naked every time he wants to turn to be damn inconvenient.

Within a few hours Sam is clothed and fed and drugged to the gills and Dean can finally relax. Except he can't. This had been way, way too fucking close a call, and he doesn't know if Gordon had tipped off any other hunters about Sam before the son of a bitch had met his grisly and oh-so-deserved end.

Sam sleeps for a full day, lazy ass that he is. Dean makes two more calls to Bobby and spends the rest of his time lying on his bed, thinking. When Sam finally shows signs of intelligent life, Dean is by his side in an instant with a bottle of water, watching as the confusion in Sam's eyes turns to realization. Welcome to your life, kiddo.

Sam groans. "Dean…"

"Easy there, Shiloh." Dean rests a hand on Sam's shoulder, partly to comfort, partly to hold him in place so he doesn't move and fuck up his wounds.

"You know, White Fang, sooner or later you're gonna run out of those."

Yeah, Sam's okay. Dean smiles. "Hey, I haven't yet."

They're quiet for a few moments, until Sam blinks blearily up at him. "How long have I been out of it?"

"It's been almost a week since we got grabbed."

"And Gordon?" Sam shifts uneasily. "Or…what's left of him?"

Sam isn't meeting his eyes. Sam is guilty over the death of that psychopathic fucker, because of course he is. He's Sam. He cried for days when he got overexcited in dog form and nipped a squirrel's tail. "Bobby's gonna salt and burn him. He had it coming, Sammy. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Give him a warning bark and let him run off and raise an army of douchenozzles to come after us?"

"No, I know. You had to." Sam takes the water, flinching as he tries to move into a position where he can drink it without taking an involuntary bath. "It's just gonna be tricky explaining the hunter who disappeared while working the same case as us, you know?"

"Bobby'll cover for us."

"All Bobby does is cover for us," Sam mutters, putting the water bottle on his nightstand. "We'd be murdered about twenty times over if Bobby wasn't covering for us."

It's true. Bobby's kept their secret from the hunter community for as long as they've had it, providing nothing but support, never thinking any different of them for all their fur and claws, and enabling their addition to rawhide.

"He's Bobby, Sam. He wants to do it."

"I know," Sam says again. "But sometimes I think it's not fair to him, you know? He used to have a lot more contacts that he has now. A lot more friends."

Dean wonders how much of that is their fault and how much of that is typical hunter turnover, but he can't argue with Sam about this, because he kind of agrees. Bobby's had to cut ties with every hunter who's come too close to the truth in order to keep his house as a safe home base for the two of them. And with yet another near-miss, Dean's been wondering exactly how long they can sustain this, how much longer they can keep crisscrossing the lower 48 and hunting the supernatural while, you know, _being_ supernatural.

"Maybe we should just go to Alaska," Dean jokes. And then he thinks, why was that a joke? "We should go to Alaska."

"Are you serious?" Sam sits up further, wincing a little. "You really want to drive to Alaska?"

"Yeah. Just until the buzz around Gordon's death dies down." The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it's a good idea. "Why not? Lots of backwoods hunts, lax leash laws, fewer people around to ID us as skin-walkers." Actually, it sounds like a damn great idea. "Maybe you can even join a sled dog team with some of the other huskies."

"You know, Dean, it's been eighteen years, and I'm _still_ a Malamute."

"Yeah." Dean thinks back to when this started, a hunt gone epically wrong when they were just little kids. It had seemed like the end of the world at the time, but they've handled it pretty damn well, if he says so himself. "You were such a cute puppy. I wonder what went wrong."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I was a cute puppy. And you had fleas." Low blow, Sammy.

"Wait." Dean hops off his bed and digs around in his bag. "You wanna know what the vet gave me?" Dean pulls out the container, popping the lid and waving it under Sam's nose. "Liver treats. Your favorite!"

Sam scowls. "Fuck off, Dean."

"Ah, c'mon. Hey, who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? _You're_ a good—"

Turns out Sam's not too weak to whip his water bottle at Dean's face.


	2. The Fate That Falls

_After discovering what she agreed to ten years ago, Mary takes off in the middle of the night with a nearly six-month-old Sammy, desperate to protect her youngest son from demonic forces. But thirteen years later, the past catches up to her…and to Dean and John. _

The Fate That Falls

Mary wakes up at two in the morning on October 29th, 1983 in a cold sweat and is instantly awake and out of bed before she remembers that there are no monsters to fight anymore. There are no demons on this sleepy Kansas street.

John is still slumbering soundly despite her speedy exit from their bed, and she pads down the hall into Dean's room. Dean is fast asleep in his bed with the Batman sheets. His little backpack is propped against his little desk that's covered in slim books about animals and lined paper for practicing his letters and he's never touched a gun or a silver knife and he's never going to. Mary gently shuts the door and goes into Sammy's nursery. The baby is sleeping curled up on his side in his crib, the peaceful expression on his face matching John's perfectly. Mary smiles and reaches out to run her fingers over his impossibly soft head. Her baby Sammy, growing up so fast. He'll be six months in just a few days…

Mary's hand stills. Sammy will be six months to the day on November 2nd, because he was born on May 2nd. Ten years to the day after that horrible night.

"_In ten years I need to swing by your house for a little something_…"

It's a coincidence. Except that there are no coincidences with demons.

Mary sits at Sammy's side until daybreak.

* * *

It's Saturday, and when John sticks his head in, wondering why she was up so early, Mary tells John she got a few minutes ago to feed Sammy. The lie rolls off her tongue easily, like the thousands of lies she told when she was hunting, the lies she's told John since.

They had all planned to go to the park today, and Mary puts on her sweetest smile, tells John that her friend Emily just had a fight with her husband and would he mind taking the boys himself so she can and comfort her? Another lie. John swallows it with a grin, and soon the boys are fed, packed up with their favorite toys, and on the road.

Mary goes down to the basement. After that night, after her parents' deaths, she'd left behind most of the guns, the blessed blades and everything else. But she'd kept a few things. One handgun, one shotgun, one silver knife. A hunter's first aid kit, with fishing line for stitches and whiskey for anesthetic. Her parent's book of contacts. Their best book on demonic lore. She'd stashed them in the darkest corner she could find, locked in a chest that she told John she lost the key to. It was partly for safety, partly because she needed to keep some memento of her parents, partly because she wanted to be able to come down to the basement to check the fuse box or store something and glance over at the chest and remind herself that she hadn't touched it and she never would.

The key is taped to the bottom of the chest. It's a simple hiding place, stupidly simple and frankly sloppy, but she wasn't a hunter anymore when she hid it, and John has always been so trusting.

She pulls out the lore book and sits on the freezing cold floor and reads. And when she's done, she takes out the handgun and the knife and goes upstairs.

There is nothing new in the lore book. She knew that when she opened the book—that was just a refresher course. Now comes the hard part.

She knows she didn't sell her soul, and she's pretty sure from what she's read about demons and deals tells her that you can't sell the soul of another person.

But you can sell their body. Could the demon be coming to take Sammy?

Mary returns for the contact book and calls every number her parents ever saved. A lot of the numbers have been disconnected; whether their original owners changed their numbers or died, she has no way of knowing. Many ring and ring until Mary hangs up. Most of the people who pick up are shocked to hear from her. Apparently, most of the hunter community assumed she died that night when her parents did.

It takes her all afternoon to zero in on a few demon experts, and then she asks her questions as nebulously and hypothetically as possible, but still learns a few things.

There have been a few reported instances of demons stealing babies and replacing them with demonspawn, she learns, but those are probably corrupted stories of changelings. Demons will sometimes focus their attention on a single person, often from childhood, twisting and tempting them, and it churns Mary's stomach to think about a demon fixating on her baby, but that doesn't require the permission of a parent. By the time John returns with the boys, Mary has figured out nothing for certain, except that Sammy is in danger.

It's a long night of faking smiles. She hadn't made dinner, so she sends out John for fast food. Dean is worn out from playing at the park all day, but he's not too tired to spend all night prattling on about Halloween and costumes. He wants to be Batman, and Sammy to be Robin. He wants them both to be puppies. He wants to be Han Solo, and Sammy to be Chewbacca.

After the kids are put to bed, and Mary is working on their costumes (Dean is a cowboy and Sammy is a pumpkin, and she's learned over the years that the skills for sewing fabric and human skin are fairly similar), John sits down next to her and asks if she's okay. His eyes are earnest and loving and Mary almost breaks down and tells him everything. But she doesn't. She wants him to be safe, to be normal, to keep being the sweet and optimistic opposite-of-a-hunter that she married. She tells him the business with her friend is really getting to her. He smiles and offers to take over costume duty so she can go to bed early.

The next day, she gets a call back from one of her parents' contacts. Apparently, three weeks ago, there had been demonic omens in Saginaw, Michigan. And then a fire had started in a baby's nursery, killing the mother and burning the house to the ground. The baby had been exactly six months old.

There are no coincidences with demons.

Mary makes her decision that night. Now she just has to prepare, and have one last Halloween with her family.

On November 1st, 1983, she packs up her things and Sammy's, and the guns and the knife. She leaves a note on the kitchen table, saying that she's sorry and she loves them but she has to protect Sammy. While it's still dark, while her husband and eldest child are sleeping, worn out from trick-or-treating, she walks out of her safe and normal house and down her safe and normal street with a duffel bag in one hand and a baby's car seat in another and steals her neighbor's truck. She paints sigils on the roof and on Sammy's baby blanket and sets a course for far, far away.

* * *

_Thirteen Years Later_

It's John's day off, and he's spent most of the morning answering calls from the garage because apparently they can't figure out how to replace a goddamn sparkplug without him. He hangs up the phone for the third time, letting out an exasperated sigh. All he wanted was to spend the day watching TV, and then hang out with Dean after his son's baseball practice.

He's halfway to the couch when the phone rings again, and he stomps over and grabs it off the hook to tell Bill to _shove it_, but it's not Bill's voice he hears.

"John? Is that you?"

Mary. The air freezes in John's lungs. _Mary_. The name fills his body, fills his brain. But a minute passes before he can force his mouth to say it. "Mary."

"John…I… I never thought I'd hear your voice again."

There are so many things that John's imagined he would say to her if he ever spoke to her again. All told, he must have spent weeks in the past thirteen years fantasizing about this moment. But before he can formulate what he's going to say, the words come out on their own.

"Put Sammy on the phone."

He hears Mary's breath hitch.

"Put Sammy on the phone _right now_."

"I can't do that. I'm sorry."

"No. No! Let me talk to my son RIGHT NOW!" He's screaming into the phone now, and he doesn't care.

"He's not here." And John's world tilts and oh, God, what if Sammy isn't with her, what if Sammy… "But he's okay. He's safe." John breathes out a sigh of relief. "He…he looks like you, John."

Sammy looks like him. Sammy _looks like him_. "Does he even know who I am?"

"Don't ask me that, John."

"No. Tell me. Does he know me? Does he know Dean?"

Mary draws in a shaky breath. "I told him you died," she whispers. "And he doesn't know he has a brother."

John didn't think his heart could break any harder than it did on the day he found his wife and baby gone. He was wrong.

John thinks about hanging up. He doesn't. "Where are you?"

"I can't tell you that."

"What?"

"John, please. I need you to trust me—"

"Trust you? _Trust you_? You _took_ Sammy from me, Mary, and you _abandoned_ Dean. Do you really expect me to _trust you_?" Tears drip down his face now, his voice shaking with anger.

"I'm sorry, John," Mary chokes out, and John knows from the sound of her voice she's crying, too. "I'm so sorry. I had to. I had to take him away."

"_Why_?"

It's the question that's haunted John for thirteen years, hovering over his shoulder, forming on his lips when he wakes up in the morning and when he goes to bed at night. The question that plagued him when Dean graduated elementary school and hit his first homerun and got his learner's permit and Mary wasn't there. The question that hangs between them when he and Dean avoid each other's eyes every May 2nd.

"Why did you do this?"

Mary is crying loudly now, and that sound used to push away any other feeling in John except the need to fix, to comfort. Now it makes him furious. What right does she have to cry when it's his son that was taken, his son that was abandoned, his family that was ruined by _her_?

"There's so much I didn't tell you, John. There's so much I should have told you."

"Then tell me," John demands through his tears.

John's imagined every possible reason she could have, from her being forced at gunpoint to a secret past in the CIA to Sammy not being his baby, although thinking that one had felt like a betrayal. But he never, ever, in his worst moment, in his most drunken haze, imagined this.

"There's a demon after him, John. A yellow-eyed demon. This was the only way I could protect him."

John couldn't make himself say anything but: "What?"

"I know. I know how it sounds. I know you think I'm crazy. But it's the truth. The demon, it killed my parents twenty years ago, the night we ran off together. And then I realized it was coming for Sammy. I had to get him away, and keep moving him, so it couldn't find him. But I…I didn't want to drag you and Dean into it, I wanted you to have normal lives, so I… I did the best thing I could, John."

John realizes several things at once. He realizes that Mary is insane. He realizes that she's been dragging Sammy around the country, or even the world, for thirteen years. And he realizes that he has to play this very, very carefully, or he'll never have a chance to see his son again.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Mary sounds shocked. She's not crazy enough to think John would believe this bullshit, at least.

"Just…tell me why you called."

Mary sucks in a rattling breath. "I've been able to stay in front of it for this long. But I don't think I can do this much longer. I think it's catching up to me."

John hesitates, his heart hammering. Should he offer to take Sammy in? Would Mary say yes? "What do you want me to do?"

"I think I've found a way to kill it. To end this. A special gun. A colt."

Great. His insane wife is going to kill a demon with a colt.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks. _Please say you want me to watch Sammy. Please. _

"I left Sam with a friend. Well, another hunter. Bobby Singer."

"Hunter?" John is lost again, wondering who is watching his child.

"Someone who hunts and kills supernatural things. Demons and werewolves and…well, everything you've ever thought wasn't real. It's what my parents did. What I did before we got married."

Mary is worse than he thought. John doesn't know what to say. "Where?"

"He lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota."

South Dakota. Seven hours. Sammy is seven hours away.

"I'm going to try to kill the demon. But if I…if I don't make it, I want you to know where Sammy is. I want him to know about the rest of his family."

Mary thinks she could die. Part of John cares about that, cares about what she'll really be doing when she thinks she's going after a demon. Most of him just desperately wants Sammy. "Okay."

"John…I know you don't believe me. How could I expect you to? But just talk to Bobby Singer. I've told him you're coming. He'll explain. He'll give you proof. And I'll tell Sammy the truth, about you and Dean."

Bobby Singer. Sioux Falls, South Dakota. "Fine."

There's a pause before Mary speaks again. "John, how…how's Dean?"

John stares at the phone for almost ten seconds before he hangs up.

* * *

Dean barges into the house and stomps into the kitchen like he always does, cleats hanging around his neck, baseball bat resting on his shoulder. He's grass-stained and grinning, and John has no idea what to say to him.

Dean's grin slips as he sees John, sitting numbly at the table with his two empty beer bottles. "Dad?" Dean's eyes flit uncertainly between the bottles and John's face, and John feels like shit for making Dean worry about his drinking again. "What's going on?"

"Dean…" _Your mother is trying to kill a demon. Your brother is with a complete stranger in South Dakota._ "Sit down."

The cleats and the bat are dumped on the table and Dean sinks into the seat across from John. "Dad?"

"It's about Sammy."

* * *

Dean is pale as John tries to explain the situation as carefully as possible. They don't talk much as they pack overnight bags and load the Impala with road food. John calls the garage and tells them he's going to be gone for he doesn't know how long, he'll call later with details, and tells the school that Dean has the flu. Dean charts them a route to Sioux Falls on a few long-unused maps.

It's past eleven by the time they get on the road, and it's pretty much a given that they're driving through the night. John considered not taking Dean, in case things somehow get ugly, but he knows the kid would hop a bus and be right behind him anyway.

They drive in silence through Nebraska, watching identical stretches of dark highway slip under the Impala, until Dean finally speaks.

"Hey, Dad?"

"Yeah, Dean?"

"You said that Mom…you said that she was…"

"Sick, Dean. Your mother is sick." It's the kindest way he can think to say it. Sick, not balls-to-the-wall, child-endangering, demon-hunting crazy.

"Well, I mean…" Dean trails off, refusing to meet John's eyes whenever his father glances over. "I mean, if Mom is, if she's…sick, we can get her help, right? We can get her to a doctor or something and she'll get better, right?"

John's grip tightens on the steering wheel. He doesn't know. He doesn't know if Mary is the kind of crazy doctors can fix, and he doesn't know, if she did get better, if he could stand to look at her after everything she's done. But he knows Dean wants to be a family again, and he knows that'll never happen.

"I don't know, Dean. Let's just concentrate on Sammy for now, okay?" He tries to smile comfortingly at his eldest, but Dean doesn't look at him, just stares out the window, brow furrowed, and John doesn't blame him. The idea of concentrating on Sammy is anything but comforting. Sammy's been living with Mary for thirteen years, and even if he's in perfect physical health, he's been listening to Mary's crazy talk about demons being after him. And Sammy was just an innocent, trusting little boy. He must have believed her.

John wouldn't stop this car for anything, and he knows Dean wouldn't, either. But that doesn't mean he's not terrified of what they're going to find when they get to Sioux Falls.

They get to the town early in the morning, and Dean hops out of the car and finds a payphone and a phonebook. He jogs back with an address for Singer Salvage, and after asking around they get directions and learn that Bobby Singer is the town drunk. Great. Dean's jaw is tight and John wonders if he's thinking about those early years, when John wasn't handling losing his wife and baby so well and taken up something stronger than beer.

Singer Salvage is a labyrinth of tottering stacks of rusty car carcasses interspersed with sprouts of tangled weeds. John edges the Impala through the maze until they find themselves in front of a ramshackle house. A Rottweiler is chained up not far from the door, growling uneasily at them. As he and Dean get out of the car and head for the door, John estimates the length of the dog's chain, figures that they should be safe. He knocks.

"Where's Sammy?" are the first words out of John's mouth when a man opens the door. The man who must be Bobby is older than John, by how much John can't say, with graying hair and sharp blue eyes and dirty old trucker's cap.

"Sam's in the back reading," Bobby replies, not missing a beat. "He's fine. Nice kid. So I suppose you're the ones Mary sent for."

And John feels his hackles rise, feels fury boil in his stomach, because he knows Sammy is a nice kid. He was there when Sammy smiled for the first time and a thousand times after, when he first started babbling and didn't stop for days, when he was crying and calmed down because John picked him up and tossed him up in the air. He doesn't need this complete fucking stranger telling him what kind of kid Sammy is (_except he does_). John wants to shove past this guy and run inside to his son…and he's terrified at the thought.

"I'm gonna be needing proof you are who you say you are," Bobby drawls, his eyes flicking over John's and Dean's faces.

"Right." John pulls out his wallet and fumbles for his driver's license, motioning for Dean to do the same.

"Not that kinda of proof," Bobby says, and he sounds impatient, but his eyes are sad, almost pitying, and after thirteen years of being a single dad with a kidnapped baby boy nothing rankles John more than pity.

"Then what, exactly?" he snaps. He can feel Dean beside him, rocking nervously on his heels.

Bobby pulls out a ratty flask and holds it out to him. "Take a sip, both of ya."

John eyes the crosses etched on the metal, thinking about Mary's talk of demons. "What's in it?"

"If you are who you say you are? Nothin' but water."

John takes the flask, unscrewing the top and peering inside. The interior is too dark to tell if it's really water, but there aren't any tiny infant bones floating around in it, at least. But as much as John hates the idea of his kid drinking something given to him by some old guy in a rundown salvage yard, his other kid is somewhere in that old guy's rundown house, so he takes a pull, tastes nothing but water, and shoves it into Dean's hand. Dean doesn't even hesitate before he downs a swig, and John should be more concerned by how easy and practiced the motion is, but he can't bring himself to care. Sammy's proximity is like a buzzing in his eyes, getting louder and louder.

"Now hold out your arms, sleeves up." Bobby produces a small shiny knife out of nowhere, and John's body jerks in front of Dean, exercising instincts he didn't know he still had. "Easy, now," Bobby says, holding up his hands and turning the flat side of the blade toward them. "It's silver. I just need to make a little cut on each of ya."

"Why?" John demands.

"Because there are a lotta things out there that can look like people they ain't, and they're not too fond of silver."

This man is insane, John knows. This man is just as insane as Mary is, thinks that demons and vampires and werewolves are real and out to get him. The last thing John should be doing is letting him cut his son, but this insane man and that insane woman who was once John's wife have been taking care of his son for thirteen years, and John needs that to stop.

He grabs the knife from Bobby, wincing as he slices a small line across the middle of his inner forearm and turns to Dean. He tries to smile reassuringly at his son, who looks understandably freaked out. "Just a little one, Dean. Won't hurt at all."

Dean's too smart to believe that, but his face nevertheless shifts to a mask of determination. He tugs up his sleeve and offers his bare arm to John. "Whatever it takes to get Sammy." He barely flinches as John nicks his skin, and John feels a swell of pride for his eldest.

"Alright then. Nice ta meet ya, John and Dean Winchester." Bobby moves away from door, turning to the side to let them in. "Through the door to your right."

Sammy is just a few steps away. All John has to do is go through the door he can see now, just past a pile of books, and he'll see his youngest son for the first time in thirteen years, for the first time since Sammy was a chubby five month old baby who couldn't talk or walk or crawl. The opportunity to hug his child is just five seconds away and John isn't moving. He's frozen to the spot.

But Dean isn't. Dean pushes past him and Bobby and makes a beeline for the door, and John finally gets his feet to move. By the time Dean pulls open the door, John is right at his shoulder.

A scrawny, brown-haired boy is sitting on a lumpy couch, a huge leather-bound book in his lap. He looks up at them uncertainly, and he looks like Mary and John and maybe even a little like Dean, and John knows in his bones that this is his son. His baby. His Sammy.

Sammy looks at them with big hazel eyes, just like he used to. He sets the book down. "Are you…are you my Dad?"

"Y-yeah," John's voice comes out as a choked whisper. He wants to run over, to pull the boy into his arms and never let go, but he knows Sammy is scared and has known that his father is alive for less than a day and he doesn't want to make it worse. "I'm your Dad. And this is your brother, Dean."

Dean manages a shaky smile, eyes glued to his little brother. "Hey Sammy. Long time, bro."

Sammy's eyes flash between them. "Hi." The boy stands up, slowly, and John takes that as his invitation. In seconds Sammy is wrapped up in his arms, and it's thirteen years too late, but it's still good.

"Do you know…" Sammy mumbles into John's shoulder. "Do you know if Mom did it? If she killed the demon yet?"

Dean sucks in a gasp. John reluctantly pulls the boy from his chest, rests his hands on the boy's small shoulders, and stares into his wide eyes. "Sammy. I know this is hard, but…" he swallows. How can he explain to Sammy that everything his mother ever told him was a lie? "There _is_ no demon, Sammy."

Sammy's confused and he opens his mouth to argue, but Bobby interrupts.

"Yeah, about that." The man is leaning in the doorway, watching them with unmistakably sad eyes. "There's somethin' you need to know."


	3. Freedom to Live

_Dean is seconds too late, and Soulless Sam kills Bobby, scarring his vessel and preventing his soul from being returned. Death-fic, it goes without saying. _

Freedom to Live

"I didn't want to hurt him. Not really."

The thing that isn't Sam is standing in the shadows, calm and composed, wiping Bobby's blood off its hands.

"He seemed like a decent guy. But you shouldn't have tried to make me take my soul back, Dean."

Dean doesn't know how to speak. His vision swims. The pool of blood around Bobby's corpse inches outward. It's still warm.

He had been so close.

"It was a spell, Dean," the thing explains. "Balthazar told me how to do it. To make the body unsuitable to house the soul, you have to commit patricide." It shrugs. "So it was nothing personal."

There's a gaping hole in Bobby's neck and the closest thing Dean has to a father is dead and the thing that he used to call Sam says that it wasn't personal.

The thing starts to leave. Dean still doesn't know how to speak, but there are instincts ingrained in him deeper than speech. His gun is out and pointed at the back of the thing's head. The familiar click of a gun being cocked reverberates through the room. The thing turns around and laughs with Sam's voice.

"You're not gonna kill me, Dean." Its eyes glint in the darkness. "I'm your brother."

"You're not my brother." Dean's voice is still rough and ragged from when he screamed just seconds ago.

"No, I guess I'm not," the thing concedes. It stretches its muscled arms out wide as it shrugs again. "But I'm enough of him that you won't be able to pull that trigger." It turns to leave.

"You're not my brother," Dean repeats, and the tears in his eyes spill over. "You're the thing that made it so I'll never get him back."

The thing doesn't even look at him as it drags open the door. "See you around, Dean."

It's leaving. It's going out into the world, to hunt and to kill and to track Bobby's blood over the ground.

Dean pulls the trigger.

* * *

When Death enters with Sam's flayed soul in his briefcase, Dean is sitting on the concrete floor cradling his brother's dead body in his lap. Blood from the gaping wound in the back of the boy's skull has soaked through his jeans. Tears drip down the older brother's face as he strokes the hair of the younger brother he killed. Death is reminded of Cain weeping over Abel's slain corpse in half-tilled field and he sighs at the predictable cycles that run ad nauseam on this planet. God seems to be quite fond of literary symmetry, but it bores Death.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean doesn't look up. "You can't put his soul back."

Sam Winchester's body is scarred by terrible sin, and even if Death were to resurrect it, he could never return its soul.

"No, I cannot."

Dean nods, more tears sliding down his chin. Bobby's soul is on another plane of existence, trying to haggle with his reaper, demanding to know what will happen to Dean and to Sam's soul before he agrees to move on. No reaper has come for the dead, empty flesh in Dean's lap.

"Can you take it to heaven?"

"I can." Death would enjoy seeing the angels try to stop him. If any soul deserves the eternal peace and comfort of heaven, it is this torn and mangled shard of brilliance that he pried from Lucifer's grip. "But you must understand that the wall will not function there as it would on Earth. Even in heaven, his soul will be quite damaged."

"Yeah, I get it." Dean swipes at his face with one hand, trying to brush away the tears, but they continue to fall. His gaze lingers on the gun lying by his side. "Do it."

Death does not take orders from mortals, and every sentient creature in every universe is a mortal when compared to Death. But he likes Dean. He will allow the boy one last act of impertinence.

Death inclines his head toward Dean in a semblance of a nod. He walks toward the open door, and then turns to look over his shoulder. "You will be joining us soon, I presume?"

Dean looks down at his dead brother and nods.

"Shall I send along the reaper you call Tessa, for old time's sake?"

Dean doesn't respond, but Death decides to do so anyway. He removes himself from Dean's sight, but he waits, invisible, and watches the boy pick up his gun, put it under his chin, and pull the trigger.

When Death arrives at the Winchesters' heaven, Dean is already there, sitting on the porch of Bobby Singer's house. He looks up when Death appears, eyes filled with apprehension and hope. He's seen that expression in many pairs of eyes over his interminable existence. It's the second most common, in fact, after dread and fear.

Death opens the briefcase, watching as Sam's soul manifests into a bewildered, shivering man who collapses into Dean's arms. Already, Death feels, someone is tearing at the fabric of the Winchesters' heaven, trying to tunnel inside. Death sighs again. He knew there was going to be trouble when humans discovered string theory.

Predictable cycles govern life on this planet, and if Death is not mistaken (and he rarely is), the cycle of the Winchester boys isn't coming to its end, but rather starting anew.


	4. Angele Dei

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews and follows! I'm really surprised people are actually reading this, and appreciate the feedback! _

_A de-powered Castiel finds himself in 1983, and sets out to foil Fate herself and save his friends from a lifetime of suffering. He loses the battle, but with some help, he may just win the war. _

Angele Dei

Castiel doesn't sleep, at least not anymore. So when he wakes up on a park bench, he quickly realizes that something is off.

He sits up slowly. It's a cool, crisp day, and dried brown leaves blow past his feet. The sun is beginning to sink below the horizon. Cas takes stock of himself—he's not injured, as far as he can tell. He tries to recall where he was and what he was doing before waking up, but his memories are fuzzy. He rises, closes his eyes, and taps into his innate angelic powers to determine his location.

Nothing comes. Castiel frowns. He holds out his hand, calling upon his grace to manifest itself in the form of brilliant white light in his palm. Nothing. He tries to draw his blade from his sleeve. Nothing. His powers, Castiel realizes, are gone. He may as well be human.

With no other options open to him, Castiel wanders. He's in a nice, quiet neighborhood, the kind Dean professed to hate. There are children, dressed in costumes, going door to door. He recognizes this human custom: Halloween, which occurs on October 31st. Castiel doesn't keep close track of dates (he doesn't see a need to) but it was spring before he found himself here. He wonders what else has changed.

He finds a machine that dispenses newspapers, and learns that the year is 1983. He doesn't need long to recognize the significance of this year. Castiel wonders if this is a test, if his Father sent him here, or if it was someone else.

Through some invisible guiding force or sheer dumb luck, Castiel soon finds himself in front of the Winchesters' house. John Winchester emerges with a small boy with long hair who is dressed in black with pointy ears. Dean. Mary Winchester stands in the door and waves them off with one hand, the other cradling an infant. Sam. They're a lovely, picturesque family that has less than two days until it is irretrievably broken.

Countless cupids conspired to ensure that John and Mary, and their parents, and their parents, and their parents before them ended up together. From the beginning of time, from the first single cell to convert sunlight to glucose, from the first creature to heave itself onto dry land, from the first human to pray and to love and to die, Mary Winchester was to perish in fire and the apocalypse was to be started by the Winchester boys. It is written. It is fate. It is destiny.

"Destiny can go screw itself," Castiel says aloud. "Right in the face."

* * *

The next day is November 1st. Castiel now has one day to act. He needs to warn the Winchesters, get them out of harm's way.

"Mom used to say angels were watching over us," Dean had told him one drunken night during the apocalypse, after Sam had gone to sleep. "You know, like it was good thing, like we should feel protected." He had laughed a little, without humor. "Guess she got a few things wrong."

Mary Winchester believes in angels. Castiel can work with that.

John leaves soon after dawn, driving away in the Impala. Soon Mary walks with her children some ways down the street, and they wait until a bright yellow bus takes Dean away. Mary continues her walk, pushing Sam along in a stroller.

Castiel cuts them off as they make their way down the sidewalk. "Hello."

Mary pauses, looking uncertain. "Hello. Do I, uh, do I know you?"

"My name is Castiel," Castiel says. He really should have planned what he was going to say. How do you tell someone their death is imminent?

"Uh, okay. Do you live in the neighborhood, or…?"

"You are in danger," he tells her. "A demon is coming for your family."

Mary's eyes widen in shock. She steps away from him. "What did you just say?"

"A demon called Azazel is coming to infect Sam. He will kill you in the process. You must come with me."

Mary's eyes harden, and she moves to place herself between Castiel and the stroller. "How do you know my baby's name?" she demands. "Christo!"

Castiel holds himself very still as she scrutinizes his face, looking for a reaction. "I am not a demon."

"Then what are you?" Mary demands, lifting Sam from his stroller and holding him protectively against her chest. "You sure as hell don't look like a hunter."

"I am an angel."

Mary is silent for a moment. Sam makes some babbling, nonsensical noises against her shoulder, unaware of the tension surrounding him. "You really expect me to believe that?" she finally says.

"Do you not believe in angels?"

Mary's face tightens. "I _may_ believe in angels, but I certainly don't believe that they're walking the Earth as scrawny businessmen in trench coats."

"Technically it's an overcoat."

Mary narrows her eyes at him. "Stay the hell away from me and my family." She turns away from him.

"Wait! I will prove to you what I am."

Mary pauses. "You have ten seconds."

"Confidence," Sam had said when Castiel asked him how he and his brother impersonated law officials with such success. "Just act like you know what you're doing and people will believe you."

"Very well," Castiel says to Mary. He summons up his confidence, gathers the scattered shards of the angelic grace left in his vessel, and stretches out his arm toward a nearby bush. Dean often muttered about angels and God and burning bushes, so he feels this is appropriate.

His whole body trembles with the exertion. His world focuses down to the bush, to the warm glow of power in his stomach, to the miracle he's trying to achieve.

The leaves on the bush shudder. Castiel suspects the breeze.

"I don't know who you are, but if I see you again, I'll call the cops," Mary warns. "And that will be you getting off easy. My husband was a Marine, and I was trained by the best hunters in the country." She grabs the stroller and stalks down the street toward her house. "Stay away from my kids."

Castiel opens his mouth to call after her, moves to chase her down and convince her of the truth, but a young woman across the street is eyeing him uneasily, and Castiel does not want law enforcement called on him. In his condition, he might not be able to escape them.

Sam looks at him over Mary's shoulder, his eyes bright and curious, and shoves a few fingers in his mouth.

Unless Castiel acts, this infant has only a day left with his mother. Only a day left with his pure human blood.

Castiel is too weak to set a shrubbery alight; he would stand no chance against a powerful demon like Azazel. He will be easily killed in any one-on-one fight. If Castiel waits until Azazel comes, the fight will have already been lost. He has to get the Winchesters out of their house.

He skulks around the neighborhood for hours, trying to avoid discovery by Mary. He uses the time to scrawl demon-banishing sigils along the base of house. They won't keep Azazel out, but it makes him feel a little better.

After a few hours, Mary comes out of the house, and Castiel scrambles into their next-door neighbor's greenery to hide. She walks back to the same place on the street, and the bus returns with Dean. The little boy is chattering excitedly to her. Mary is smiling, but Castiel can see the shadow in her eyes, the way she scans the space around her and keeps her children close as she walks. She's rattled. Castiel has rattled her. He wishes that was enough to break through her desperate desire to have a normal life. He wishes that was enough to keep her safe.

Castiel doesn't move until they are all back in the house. He's an angel of the Lord, lying on his stomach in the dirt.

* * *

He decides to confront John before the man has a chance to speak to his wife. At this stage in his life, John may not be a hunter, may not know about demons and ghosts and what really goes on in the dark, but if the stories Dean has told Castiel are true, then the man cares deeply about protecting his family. Perhaps in an obsessed, misguided way, but Castiel cannot judge. He has been obsessed and misguided many times in his past, especially when it comes to the Winchesters.

The sun is beginning to set when John arrives with the familiar rumble of the Impala. He parks on the street and gets out. Castiel makes his move.

"Excuse me."

John looks at him with unguarded eyes. "Can I help you?"

"Sometimes you have to scare people," he remembers Sam telling him, his broad shoulders slumped apologetically. "Nice people. It sucks, but sometimes there's no faster way to keep them safe."

"Your family is in danger, John Winchester," Castiel says.

John's jaw goes slack and his eyes widen. "What?"

"You must leave, right now. Something is coming for your family." Darkness is falling and in a few hours November 1st will become November 2nd.

"Who the hell are you?" John asks, backing away.

Castiel wants to grab the man and shake him until he understands. Why must the Winchesters make it so hard for him to protect them? "I am a friend. Please, you must listen to me. You don't have much time."

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"No! Your lives are at stake. You don't have to trust me, you just have to take your family and leave now."

John is nearing the door now. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Something evil is coming, John. You must—"

The door swings open and Mary is standing there, furious and frightened. "John! Get away from him, now! And get the fuck out of here, you son of a bitch!"

John and Mary disappear into the house, slamming the door as though that will keep them safe.

There's no time left. Azazel is coming. Castiel has to get them out _now_.

He runs down the street until he comes upon a small store, and uses the crumpled bills in his pockets to purchase a pack of matches. Back at the Winchesters' house, he fumbles with the matches and loses several in his panic before he manages to produce a flame. But the wood of the structure does not catch on fire.

Arson is more difficult than Castiel had expected. He barely has time to reflect on how bad of a decision he has made before he hears the sirens and sees the flashing red and blue lights.

He was right; he is not in a condition to escape from law enforcement. Castiel is dragged away to a police station and the Winchesters are left to burn.

* * *

At the station, the police officers throw him in a small, bare cell with a concrete cot and a metal bowl for a toilet which make Castiel grateful that he (as far as he is aware) will not have to use it. They make him breath into a tube. One of them—whom Castiel, calling upon his knowledge of law enforcement tactics, dubs Bad Cop—rages and hurls abuse at him, while another gently asks him if he's on any medications or if he has a doctor they should call. That one is Good Cop.

They've been questioning him for around an hour, ignoring his assertions that the Winchesters are in danger (although these ignorant humans could do nothing when faced with Azazel but act as cannon fodder) when the station erupts in activity. The Winchester house, Castiel knows immediately, has burned. Mary Winchester is dead.

Bad Cop thunders up to his cell, disheveled and furious. "You have a friend, you son of a bitch? Is that how you did it?"

"I tried to warn you," Castiel tells him. He says no more, despite their most earnest attempts to cajole, wheedle, and threaten information out of him, and mourns for what has been lost.

Castiel is left in that cell for three days. He is being charged with attempted arson, he is told, and is also being held in suspicion of involvement with the death of Mary Winchester. Eventually, Bad Cop comes out and unlocks his cell.

"You've been bailed out," the man tells him coldly. "Don't leave the city."

"Bailed out?" Castiel repeats. "By whom?"

Bad Cop looks extremely unhappy with the answer as he provides it. "John Winchester."

John Winchester enters. He sports dark circles under bloodshot eyes. His hair is messy and greasy and sticks out at angles that Dean and Sam's hair never stuck out at. Castiel doubts that he has slept or ate or showered since it happened.

"I'm asking you one last time, John," Good Cop is saying. "Don't do this. Let us work on him a little longer. Go back to your kids."

John ignores the police officer. "We're going," he growls at Castiel. Castiel goes.

John leads him to the corner of the police station parking lot, where the Impala crouches in the shadow of a tree like some sort of wild animal. Castiel stops by the car and John hulks in front of him. "How did you know? How did you know what was going to happen?"

Castiel hesitates. Should he repeat his claim that he is an angel with advance information from heaven, or should he mention the time travel? He doesn't know which story will be less believable.

"I talked to someone. Missouri Moseley. She says," John swallows, his eyes leaving Castiel, flitting around the parking lot. "She says that there are things out there in the dark. Nightmare things. That one of them k—took Mary." He returns his gaze to the angel, eyes full of grief and edged with steel. "Are you one of those things?"

"A demon killed your wife; I am an angel. My name is Castiel."

"An angel." John tears at his hair with his hands. "I just bailed an angel out of jail for trying to burn my house down. How fucked up is it that that's not the most insane thing that's happened to me this week?"

John doesn't seem to disbelieve him. Castiel should view this a positive development, he knows, but he finds it hard to rejoice when tragedy has beaten the skepticism out of him. "I suppose I would call that…fairly fucked up."

"If you're an angel," John says, wiping tears from his eyes, "why didn't you stop this? Why didn't you _save her_?"

The question cuts to Castiel's core. "I tried," he says. "I tried, but I didn't have enough power. I couldn't."

"Neither could I." John leans against the car as though his legs could no longer support the weight of his pain. "Then why are you still here? Why don't you just fly home?"

Castiel could tell him that his wings are gone, that heaven would likely not be happy to take him, but he knows that wasn't what John was asking. Not really. "There are dangers ahead," he says, realizing now what he must do. Perhaps saving Mary Winchester was never possible; but guiding and protecting her children, the future saviors of the world, the only true friends Castiel has ever known, might be. "Trials your children will go through. I think I can—I want to help them."

"Now I know I've lost it." John laughs the dark, pained laugh that Castiel has heard from his children too many times.

"Why?"

"Because I think I just hired my kids a guardian angel."

* * *

John takes him to a motel. The walls of the room are an offensive yellow-green, liberally adorned with poorly painted landscapes. The atmosphere of the place is identical to the many motels in which he has visited Dean and Sam, save for the presence of children's toys scattered over the rough carpet. Castiel wonders how long these young children have been left alone, if John's child-endangering habits are already developing. John moves a stack of picture books off of a chair and gestures for Castiel to sit down.

"Our neighbors gave us a bunch of stuff," John explains. "Donations." He leans down and pulls a half-full bottle of liquor from a duffel bag. Castiel suspects that this particular item was not a donation from a well-meaning neighbor. "My family is a fucking charity case."

A sniffling sound directs Castiel's attention to a crib standing in the corner of the room, but he does not see Dean. Castiel sees a door and imagines that Dean must be behind it, in a separate bedroom. "Is Dean asleep?"

"Probably not." John walks to the door, pushing it open. "Dean, buddy?" The small boy enters the field of Castiel's view. His eyes are wide and uncertain as he stares up at his father, so different from the cocky ease that Castiel has long associated with Dean. Everything about this small, frightened creature, in fact, is in opposition to what Castiel knows about Dean. "I have a friend here, if you want to meet him."

Dean shakes his head and runs away from his father. John sighs and steps out of the bedroom. "You'll have to wait on meeting Dean. You can see Sam, though."

John picks Sam out of his crib, bouncing the baby in his arms a few times before settling him in a nest of blankets on the table in front of Castiel. The juxtaposition of the infant's soft, unmarked flesh with the writhing infection of the demon blood running through his veins is revolting. Sam is stretching out his arms, pudgy hands grabbing for Castiel, and the angel is reminded of the first time he met Sam face-to-face, how the boy with the demon blood had been so earnest in his desire to shake Castiel's hand, and how disgusted Castiel had been.

"Hello, Sam," Castiel says, letting the infant grab his fingers and tug them toward his mouth. "Nice to meet you."

"He likes you," John murmurs. Castiel starts; he had nearly forgotten the eldest Winchester was still in the room. "That's good. Sammy can be picky."

Castiel would never have thought of Sam, always kind and open to making personal connections, as "picky." But he never would have expected someone so huge and strong as Sam to grow out of someone so tiny and fragile. "He seems very nice."

"He's been crying," John says. His eyes are unfocused, the words not directed at Castiel. "Crying non-stop. This is the first time he's stopped. He misses her." John takes a long drink from the bottle. "But in a year he won't remember her."

Castiel remembers a conversation he had with Dean, when he had awoken from a long, time-travel induced slumber. Dean had been, characteristically, somber and several drinks into a bottle of whisky. "I was thinking," he said, talking past Castiel in the same way John was now, "Sam just made his first memories of Mom. You know: a real, living, breathing Mom. And all it took to make it happen was an angel gone Terminator bitch."

Castiel glances up to see the small child form of Dean peeking around the door.

"Hey, Dean," John says, his voice softening. "You ready to come say hi?"

Castiel smiles at the little boy. "Hello, Dean. My name is Castiel. How—"

Dean disappears, and Castiel can hear the patter of his feet as he runs across the other room.

"Don't feel bad. Dean's barely talked since it happened." John takes another drink, and the bottle is nearly empty. Castiel remembers getting drunk, remembers how the alcohol had both dulled him and made him cruel. He'll have to monitor John's drinking. "Except to Sammy. He sleeps in the crib."

Dean enters the room, carrying a plush toy animal that might be a dog or a bear or something else. He ignores Castiel entirely as he climbs up on a chair next to Sam, waving the toy above the baby's face. Sam giggles, and Castiel realizes that he was wrong; this child has far more of the Dean that Castiel knew in him than Castiel had previously thought. The fierce protectiveness and the need to care for others that will shape Dean are already in this young boy, growing and determining the man he will be. The great man he will be.

"What kind animal is that?" Castiel asks him. Dean doesn't answer. He touches the animal's nose to Sam's, eliciting a high-pitched shriek that Castiel might have thought was pained if it wasn't for the joyful expression on the baby's face. "You're very good with him."

Dean ignores him. Sam grabs the leg of the inscrutable animal and shoves it into his mouth. Apparently, sucking on foreign objects is a common thing for infants.

"Dean, this is Castiel," John tries again. "He's…he's a new friend." Dean continues to ignore them, focusing all his attention on his brother. John sighs a deep, heavy sigh, and stares blankly at his children for a few long moments.

"Listen," he finally says. "I have to go pick something up from Missouri. Think you can…?"

"I will watch them," Castiel promises. John grabs a few things and then disappears out the door. Castiel hears the familiar rumble of the Impala as John leaves his bereaved children alone with a near-complete stranger. Castiel is grateful that he can be here for his friends this time around, to watch over them and protect them, even if he couldn't save their mother.

"Are you hungry?" Castiel tries again. Dean shakes his head. Progress—a mute response, but a response nonetheless. Castiel considers; what would be the surest way to get Dean's full attention? "Do you think Sam is hungry?"

Dean freezes when Castiel makes the suggestion, and Castiel feels immediately guilty; it shouldn't be this young child's job to worry about whether his baby brother is being adequately fed. Dean puts aside the stuffed animal and pokes Sam in the stomach experimentally, as though that will tell him whether or not the baby is full. Instead of giggling at this, however, Sam's face bunches up and he makes an affronted, fussy noise. Maybe Dean's test for hunger was more accurate than Castiel had believed.

Dean frowns and he clambers down off his chair, making a beeline for the kitchen area of the motel room. With a little difficulty, he pulls open the door of the refrigerator and removes a bottle full of white liquid. Milk, Castiel guesses, or some substitute. Castiel waits for Dean to feed Sam with it, but the child doesn't move. He looks down at the bottle in his hand, then around the room, a rather desperate expression on his young face.

"What's wrong, Dean?"

Castiel doesn't really expect the boy to respond, but Dean does, albeit in a tiny, quavering voice with his eyes glued on the bottle. "It hasta be warm."

"Oh." Castiel approaches the boy cautiously and takes the bottle from him. It is indeed quite cold. He hesitates. Can this be heated in a microwave? Or does he need to put it over a stove? Or could he…?

Four days ago, Castiel didn't have the power to set a bush alight. But maybe he can do this. He holds the bottle tightly between two hands and concentrates, feeling a stream of energy spread from his midsection down his arms and into the liquid. Soon the bottle is quite warm, and Castiel triumphantly offers it to Dean. The boy stares at it in shock, but evidently decides that feeding Sam is more important than questioning what Castiel has done.

Dean returns to the table and, with a little awkward maneuvering, props Sam up in his arms and gives him the bottle. The baby makes a pleased noise and starts sucking immediately. Eventually, he breaks off, murmuring a few contented nonsense syllables.

Dean turns to look at Castiel, meeting his eyes for the first time.

"Your name is Cas-tee-el?" Dean's young mouth wraps clumsily around the syllables. "'S a weird name."

"You can call me Cas," Castiel tells him. "If you want."


	5. And Walking Up and Down It

_After the apocalypse, Dean walks the remains of the Earth. He's alone, except for Lucifer…and maybe Sam. (_Not_ "In the End" verse, but breaks from canon right before that episode in season 5)_

_If anyone's reading this, I figured I should ask for feedback about what you want to read. Send me a request, if you like, or tell me if you would you prefer:_

_1\. Castiel gets to the bunker a minute too late, and the angel is left trying to hold the Winchesters together in the aftermath of demon Dean's attack on Sam. (NOT a death-fic)_

_Or_

_2\. When a freak hunting accident leaves 17 year old Dean brain-dead, John makes a deal, and the timeline of the apocalypse is pushed up a bit. _

And Walking Up and Down It

After the world ended, Dean watched the remains crumble around him. It was all very predictable, really: all the buildings that hadn't been destroyed in the Lucifer-Michael final showdown fell in the tearing hurricanes and twisters that followed. Food became harder to find. Disease ran rampart. Demons overran the earth, picking off the humans who haven't picked off each other until one day they all disappeared, leaving behind their meat suits as worn out, lifeless husks.

Dean's friends were already dead, at this point. Jo and Ellen and Bobby and Chuck and last of all Cas. He fell in with others, just to not be alone, but his little band of survivors saw a lot of turnover and eventually he finds that no matter how far and long he walks he can't find any other human. So he does the sensible thing: he takes his last still-working gun and blows his brains out.

And then wakes up, with a light dusting of blood and brain matter on his clothes and the Devil in his little brother's skin standing over him.

"It was one of Sam's conditions, when he said yes. That I not allow you to get hurt." Lucifer explains, inclining his head in a half-shrug, a mannerism he stole from Sam. "Or Bobby Singer, or the angel Castiel, or Ellen and Jo Harvelle, among others. Of course, he had no way of knowing that you were the only one on his list who was still alive."

Dean sits up, feeling his skull. He contemplates screaming and cursing and stabbing and shooting, but figures there's really no point in wasting the energy. "Can Sam hear me?" he finally asks, and Lucifer shakes Sam's head.

"I've put his consciousness away in a comfortable place in his head, for now. I didn't want him to have to watch this."

"What?" Dean snarls. "The end of the world? He fucking ended it, why shouldn't he have to fucking watch!"

Lucifer says nothing, eyeing Dean with vague curiosity.

"Why?" Dean finds himself demanding. "Why did he say yes?"

"Why do you want to know?" Lucifer says. "How will that information help you? Do you want me to say I tortured him? Of course I wouldn't do that. That I tricked him? I didn't."

Dean doesn't want to admit how much that knowledge fucking hurts. "Let me talk to Sam."

"You don't understand Dean," Lucifer sighs. "And I'm not going to let you talk to him. Not yet." He disappears with gentle wingbeats, like Cas used to do, an eternity ago.

So, the last human in the no-longer-the-world and with no end in sight, Dean wanders.

* * *

Dean's aged decades in the years since the apocalypse started. His knees ache all the time now, and he knows from glimpses of his reflection in pools of water that there are deep lines around his eyes, and his hair is edged with gray. Lucifer, in contrast, has kept Sam in pristine condition. Sam is young and fit and dressed in the most fucking stupid bright white suit, and will be like that forever. Sometimes Dean wonders if Lucifer's "don't allow harm to come to Dean" rule covers his natural death of old age, if he'll just keep getting older and older, shrinking and withering away while Lucifer keeps him alive.

Sometimes Dean happens upon pieces of wrong-colored fruit as he walks, or a loaf of soft fluffy bread sitting on a mound of rubble. And sometimes he eats them, just because he misses eating, and sometimes he doesn't, just to spite Lucifer's gifts. Dean hasn't bothered asking the archangel why his rib sigils no longer work—he suspects it's because Cas is dead.

* * *

Lucifer is rebuilding the Earth, on his own terms. He does it incredibly slowly, exploring possibilities in one tiny pocket of the planet at a time, but hey, he has the time. It's not like his one true vessel is going to be burning out on him any time soon. Or ever.

Often, he pops up wherever Dean is to do his experiments, and Dean watches as the archangel creates shimmering waterfalls that tumble down from nowhere and towering crystalline mountains and trees with broad red leaves. Part of Dean is disgusted with himself for hanging around and watching Lucifer play with the remains of the planet, and part of him can't help but be fascinated, and wonders exactly what Satan is going for, and is so fucking alone.

Once, as he treks through what used to be Florida, he finds Lucifer on a gray shoreline, reimaging the tidal ecosystem. Dean examines his efforts with a dull interest. As he stares at Lucifer's new take on fish—jewel-colored boxlike creatures with long spindly arms that stick out of the water, catching the light and waving in not unfriendly ways—a thought occurs to him.

"The angels said it would be hell on Earth."

Lucifer frowns. "Excuse me?"

Dean picks up a rock from a tidal pool. It's pale red and seems to be lit with a warm internal glow. "If you got out of the Cage. If you won. Cas said that it would be literally hell on Earth."

"They were just trying to scare you." Lucifer wanders over to the edge of the water, staring out over the gentle waves. "Why would I want hell on Earth, Dean? Hell was my prison just as much as it was yours."

Dean snorts. "I doubt that."

"As you doubt everything that I say."

"Yeah, I wonder why that is."

Lucifer's lips quirk. They stand in silence for several minutes. Eventually Dean speaks, pitching the rock into the water.

"My advice? Ditch the glowing shit."

"Too showy?"

"Yeah."

Lucifer nods thoughtfully, and for a moment Dean can forget the stilted speech and the stiff way he holds his shoulders and everything else and imagine that he's Sam. That Dean is helping his little brother with a school project that Sam is way, way too invested in, given that they'll probably be skipping town before he gets the grade back.

Right. Design your own post-apocalyptic hellscape. Destruction and desolation required. Humanity optional.

"I want to talk to Sam."

Lucifer shakes his head. "Not yet."

* * *

He catches sight of Lucifer's inventions almost every day, now. A massive, growling, lumpy creature that looks like a cross between a hellhound and a sabertooth tiger with shining gas-flame blue eyes. A group of twenty foot tall mushrooms that glow gently purple and green in the darkness. Dean remembers someone (_Sam_) once telling him that before trees, the Earth was covered in giant mushrooms. He wonders if Lucifer is revisiting God's greatest hits in some twisted homage to his distant Dad. Or a straightforward screw-you.

Dean wouldn't mind seeing a T-rex sometime.

He walks into the sunset for a month, and eventually reaches somewhere hotter and drier. He finds a cheeseburger with extra onions lying on the side of a busted up road, and feeds it to six-foot furry dragonfly that bumbles past.

A mile down the not-road, Lucifer is waiting for him. He's summoned a small clump of clouds and made them spew a fine mist of pinkish rain that smells overwhelmingly of peppermint. The Devil is looking at Dean expectantly. He wants Dean's opinion.

"Why are you following me?" Dean screams at the archangel. "Why the fuck can't you just leave me alone?!"

Lucifer's face is suddenly cold and furious and unfamiliar. "Sam loves you. I wanted to know why."

"You know what I think?" Dean says the next time Lucifer finds him, this time with a small, scaly frog-fish that scurries away on creepy fin-hands when Dean lobs a rock at it. "I think you burned Sam out a while ago. I think he's gone, and you're lying to me."

Lucifer blinks at him, actually seeming to be surprised. Dean hopes desperately and is terrified that he's right, and that Sam is gone.

"Sam is still in here, Dean. I could never do that to him. I don't feel complete without him."

Dean hates this the most. When Lucifer talks about Sam like he loves him. Like Dean's little brother is soulmates with the devil.

"Then let me talk to him."

"No."

"Why the hell not? What do you think I'm going to do?"

"Sam is not ready for that. You are not, either. It would only end in more pain."

Deans laughs at that, hearing the hysteria in his voice and not caring. After all the deaths and the destruction and the end of human civilization, how can there possibly be _more_ pain?

"You said Sam loves me? That's why you keep following me around?" Lucifer tilts his head in acknowledgement. "Well, you can go ahead and tell him that I don't love him. Not anymore. Not after everything he's done."

Lucifer narrows his eyes. "Dean."

"No. I don't. I fucking don't. He ended the fucking _world_. Everyone is _dead_. Why the fuck would I still love him?"

"You don't mean that, Dean," Lucifer says. His voice is icy, his eyes even colder.

"Yes, I do," Dean says, and he does, and he hates that, and he doesn't, and he hates that too. His world is nothing but hate. Hate and Lucifer's acid-trip landscapes.

"I see," Lucifer says, and flies away.

* * *

He reaches what must be the Pacific Ocean, and can't help but think that it's a little closer to the Atlantic than it used to be. Did Lucifer just peel away California and throw it out into space? Stanford was in California.

There's something in the water, something the size of skyscraper and appears gold-plated as it breaks the glassy surface. It makes the only movement in the water that Dean can see for miles. Apparently Lucifer has rethought the tides.

A shadow falls over him and he doesn't look up. Lucifer settles beside him, dangling Sam's legs over the cliff Dean's sitting on.

"I want to show you something," Lucifer says.

Dean is about to say, _no shit, that's all you've been doing for who the fuck knows how long, you know you killed your big brother, right, and you don't get to replace him with me,_ and then the archangel adds: "No, that's not right. Sam wants to show you something."

Dean doesn't struggle as Lucifer places a hand on his shoulder and this time, they both disappear.

They reappear, somewhere with flat, rubble-strewn earth and a low-hanging haze and it looks like everywhere else Dean's been, except it doesn't. There are none of Lucifer's little side projects, he realizes. It's an all-natural post-apocalyptic hellscape.

"What?" Dean asks. "What does he want me to see here?"

"Not _there_," Lucifer says. "Behind you."

Dean turns, and his brain can't quite process what he's seeing. The ground suddenly feels uneven beneath his feet, and the sky tilts, because he's not looking at vast empty expanse of broken buildings and deadness.

There are people, a few hundred yards away. There are humans close enough that if Dean screamed, they'd hear him. There's a whole crowd of fucking people and Dean's not alone anymore.

The reality of what is happening hits Dean full in the face and sinks into his stomach. He's going to tell stories and have new stories told to him. He's going to play poker again. He's going to have sex. He's going to have a conservation with someone who isn't the fucking devil. Tears are soon blurring Dean's vision of what he's pretty sure is the last miracle that will ever take place on Earth.

"Why…?"

Lucifer shrugs. He's looking at the humans (the fucking _humans_; there are _other people besides Dean_) with distaste etched on Sam's features, like they're a nasty cockroach infestation. But he's not killing them.

"Sam didn't want all of the humans to die. He wanted me to give them a chance to prove themselves. It was important to him."

The people (_fucking people_) are milling about, picking over the field. But they're not just scavenging, Dean realizes. They're moving in an orderly fashion, walking in parallel lines, bending over every few steps. They're planting crops. They're trying to grow their own food, make the land green again.

"How many?" Dean manages to croak out.

Lucifer shrugs again. "Enough."

Dean doesn't know if "enough" means enough to make Sam happy, or enough for their very presence to disgust Lucifer, or enough for humanity to start over and reclaim the world. He doesn't care.

"Let me talk to Sam," comes out of Dean's mouth.

"What are you going to say to him?"

Dean's thought of a million things he could say to Sam since Satan claimed his vessel and cities started being blown off the map.

_You're fucking dead to me, you understand that, Sam? _had darkened his thoughts more than a few times.

_I'm going to spend the rest of my life finding out how to kill you. Not him, you_, burned in his mind when he came across the charred remains of a teddy bear in what used to be Lawrence.

_I should have listened to Dad and taken you out when I had the chance, _when he made the painful mistake of thinking that far into the past.

_I understand why you did what you did, _although that was a lie.

_I fucking hate you for making me miss you after everything you've done._

_I'm sorry that I left you alone. __I know it hurts so fucking much to be alone.  
_

_Thank you for saving at least some of them. It was more than I could do. _

"I don't know," Dean answers, because he realizes he doesn't. He's pretty sure he'll have no idea what to say until he's seeing Sam looking out of Sam's eyes.

"Not good enough," Lucifer says, shaking his head. "But you'll have time to think about it."

Lucifer disappears, taking Sam with him, and leaves Dean with what's left of the world.


End file.
